PoP weekend’s glowy haze of goodness or maybe that’s the climate change.

I couldn’t help but feel a bit disoriented this weekend. The disjunction between this POP wonder whirlwind and what I’d expect from real life were a bit much at times and as delirious exhaustion mounted and eyes grew blurry the feeling increased. For one, we were selling art, loving art and meeting artists; and standing while musicians filled the dark rooms of the city up with the good sounds of their labours of love, while North Korea tested nuclear weapons under the poor tired-out ground. Oh North Korea, let’s listen to Denitia Odigie together and think about love and stuff and just be friends, ok? (her myspace is here.)

For another disorienting thing, we got to meet and ask questions of, and hang out with, dear and super smart people who came all the way from North Carolina to meet and work with us. El kept looking at me and saying “I can’t believe you got Lulu.com to come here” and that was a reminder of how truly awesome it was. Lulu does something I believe in in more ways then one- they fill a void in the publishing industry and do it out of devotion to the belief that makers should be in charge of their making with all possible tools at their disposal to enable them. They’re like us, adding layers to old, over hierarchized systems, and they were so open and supportive in all their communication with us that we learned tons. Also, we shared Thanksgiving with my craaazy parents (just kidding Mom, yer awesome even though you think my clothes are funny - it’s ok because I really do like garments with a sense of humour. What can I say, Mom calls ‘em like she seems ‘em).

And we actually put on a pretty cool workshop in our mad all together way, I think, so that’s something my mad mum can be proud of. I’ll do a post devoted to the workshop soon, and we had 2 cameras going so there’ll be tons of documentation. And we broke into the top 100 000 blogs on technorati with links from Canada.com calling us “Best of the Blogs” (go team!) and a writer who quoted a chunk of prose I nearly deleted. ha! that sure shows me!

It’s all dizzying, but in the best way. If you’d told me a year ago that we’d be working with people like Tyler and Alter Reign and organizations like Coop-Musique and Lulu, doing workshops with sic rappers and phat beats that were all about open source, I’d have jumped up and kissed you. Not to mention that we’d get to work with Tessa, who is so smart and ballsy, or that she would gather such a great little team on our behalf, get them all press passes and lay down 4 serious days of music and policy blogging. We’re working on writer’s guidelines and stuff for Indyish blogging so we can get better at this but for our first time really covering and event I’d say we rocked it, and that’s due to Tessa Smith, Tristan Brand, Jonathan Stewart, and Sarah Beall. So thanks to them. These are the kind of things I’ve been aiming for for a long(ish) time and I am so excited to be here, getting to work on what happens next. .. and man do we have some schemes for that one…

Puces POP was amazingly awesome, fun and cool, I can’t even convey how many great people were there blowing our minds, most notably the gentlemen poster artists with their sheafs of stories, art, and jaw dropping big names.

We made a sweet bunch of sales this weekend as well, both at Puces Pop and online, and that’s especially gratifying because some of the nicest, most talented people i know benefit directly from that. And the more sales artists make, the more other artists will get involved making their Indyish pages good, etc, and then again everyone benefits. Of course, the people who make the most sales are the people who have linked to us from all their websites and who have made sure to keep their photos and stuff updated on indyish.com. As Katie Jamison said of Lulu.com- “as with anything, the more you put in, the more you get out of it”. We just trying to keep putting the most worthwhile stuff in that we can, you know? and sometimes things go in an encouraging way and sometimes not, but this weekend largely felt just right.

Except that the weather was weirdly hovery beautiful, and to be honest, I never quite shake the weight of the worry about the way that it’s changing. Do you? But what can we do besides build up the healthiest most positive networks we can and try to keep on keepin on, right? So that’s what we do. If you want to get involved, get in touch, ok? We’d love to have you.
Peace,
Risa.